Papers Relating to Foreign Affairs, Accompanying the Annual Message of the President to the Second Session Thirty-eighth Congress, Part IV, Appendix to diplomatic correspondence of 1865; the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, late president of the United States of America, and the attempted assassination of William H. Seward, Secretary of State, and Frederick W. Seward, Assistant Secretary, on the evening of the 14th of April, 1865; expressions of condolence and sympathy inspired by these events

Democrats

[Translation.]

Tours, May 17, 1865.

Sir: I hope the address of the democrats of Tours will have a favorable reception from you.

It was hard to obtain 208 signatures in a city where there is only one newspaper, where the press only speaks the official language of the prefecture, where liberty is limited by policemen and public functionaries, and where democracy’s warmest partisans are among the common people.

Our document will reach you after passing through the soiled hands of our hardy workmen, who cannot leave the sheet of paper spotless, whereon they have put their hearts with the signature of their hands to express their sympathy for your great republic.

It is not you, a representative of a country where labor leads to the highest dignities of the nation, that will disdain our address because it carries the visible impress of hands devoted to work.

These are the hands that will break, in this country, all the bonds and fetters that are put on liberty, under the specious pretext of measuring and regulating its gait; these are the hands that will shake most cordially those of your citizens.

Accept the assurance of our sympathetic sentiments for you and your country.

ARMAND RIVIERE,

Chevre St., No. 12.

Mr. Bigelow,
Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States to France.